Frozen brains

Well, its been a few days since I've been able to log in. With the Holidays here and a probable upcoming deployment to the Middle East and half my shop there now(to return home before I deploy), life has been a bit hectic.

It's been worse here lately. Last week the temperatures here dropped below freezing. That in itself isn't bad, but there seem to be a lot of people that are bound and determined to prove that there is no intelligence in the military. As everyone knows, when the temperature drops below 32 degrees, water turns to ice. Anyone who has passed a basic high school level chemistry class can also tell you that when water freezes, turning it into ice, it expands. If that water is in an enclosed space where there is no room for expansion, it will break what ever is containing it in that space, a pipe for example.

Now, I'm sure everyone knows that water is delivered to most buildings through a system of pipes, and distributed through out those buildings with more piping systems. So, how do you keep pipes inside a building from freezing, and breaking because of the expansion of the ice? Well, most anybody with an ounce of common sense would tell you that you keep the heat on, and the doors and windows closed. Would you not agree with that? I sure would.

Well, like I said, some people are just bound and determined to prove that there is no "military intelligence" in the military. As I'm sure you can guess by the content of what I've written so far, a bunch of people left doors and/or windows open all night long, and all day in some cases. We've got more than 2 dozen water breaks on base right now. And we've got about 8 or 10 people that work on the base water pipes. Water breaks take an average of 5 to 8 hours to fix with 3 or 4 people working on them. So, that means about 2 water breaks a day that can be fixed on average with the number of people we have available to work, and that's only if we have all the parts we need. If we have to go downtown for parts, that will add an extra hour to the fix time. And sometimes, we end up breaking a part we need in the process of installing it, meaning we have to go back and get yet another one. Anyway, if everything goes perfectly, we can get 2 fixed per day. That means it will take more than 12 work days before we get them all fixed. Here's the kicker though, it's supposed to get below freezing again next week, and every night this week. So you can pretty much be guaranteed that some moron will leave a window or door open in several buildings across the base, causing even more breaks and making our work period that much longer.

These people make me think that their brains were froze by the low temperatures as well as the water. I mean, its common sense. They graduated highschool, passed the ASVAB test(well, I hope they didn't get a waiver for that), and they are trusted to maintain billions of dollars worth of equipment, so what's the deal? Is it too much to ask to close the door? What was the phrase mom always used to say. "Close the door! Were you born in a barn?!"